


it was you the whole time

by ameliameems



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M, One Shot, Truth or Dare, but truth or dare initiates it, dialogue prompt, its not really a truth or dare fic its mostly a gansey and the prison of his mind fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23942527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliameems/pseuds/ameliameems
Summary: Gansey was maybe a little obsessed. Or fixated. Or preoccupied. He hadn’t found a term he liked yet and or one that made him feel like a normal person. Appropriate word aside, Gansey couldn’t stop thinking about truth or dare that night. Gansey felt like Ronan had casually handed him a burning coal and the only way he could put it down was to find out who Ronan liked.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch
Comments: 2
Kudos: 50





	it was you the whole time

**Author's Note:**

> yo this was supposed to be like 300 words long. it clearly got away from me. i wrote this in between doing data analysis on tropical tree carbon storage. i did not edit it. thanks to anon on tumblr for the prompt.

It was a lazy night in Monmouth, everyone sitting in the circle on the floor eating greasy Nino’s take out on paper towels. It was a rare night where there was no school in the morning and neither Blue or Adam had to work the next day, and no one felt like going home. That’s how they had somehow ended up playing truth or dare. 

“Dare,” Ronan said for the third time. 

Blue rolled her eyes. “Again? We’re running out of dares we can do that don’t suck.”

Ronan shrugged. “Dare me to eat the Gansey half of the pizza.” 

Gansey opened his mouth to defend his topping choices but Blue cut in. “I said dares that don’t suck, Ronan.” Blue narrowed her eyes in a way Gansey had learned to recognize as an omen of mischief. “You know, for someone who won’t shut up about how he never lies, you’re awfully scared to pick truth.”

Adam cracked a wry smile. “She makes a point, Lynch.”

Something about the idea of cornering Ronan into a peer pressured confessional sent a trickle of dread through Gansey for reasons he couldn’t identify. He glanced to Noah for help but when he caught his eye Noah just raised his eyebrows at Gansey before turning back to watching the Sargent-Lynch staredown. 

“Fine,” Ronan spat. “Truth.”

Blue grinned smugly and leaned back to rest on her laurels before a sheepish look crossed her face.

“You’re fucking kidding me, Sargent, you didn’t even think of one ahead of time?” 

“Go classic!” Noah piped in. 

“Alright,” Blue said. “Do you like anyone?”

There was a flicker of an expression across Ronan’s face, too quick to read, before he leaned forward on his elbows and fluttered his eyelashes contemptuously at Blue. “Aw, gee, do you wanna paint each other's nails too?”

Blue scowled at him and Adam and Noah laughed. 

“You’re avoiding the question,” Adam said. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, Parrish, did you want an invite to the pillow fight as well?”

Adam, Blue and Noah continued laughing and poking at Ronan and he continued dancing around them and painting increasingly elaborate pictures of a 4th grade girl’s slumber party. Gansey wondered faintly why he wasn’t having fun. He found himself counting down to when Ronan would inevitably snap and storm off. 

Except he didn’t.

It was one of those moments where he realized just how much Ronan had changed in the past few months. How he picked less fights and made jokes that were more funny and less mean.

Instead of finally getting tired of the sleepover gag and lashing out like a cornered animal, he cut a quick glance to Gansey and then scowled at the rest of them. “Fine! Yeah, I do,” he said. Then before Blue or Adam could say whatever they were about to say next, he rounded on Noah and said, “Okay, Czerny, you’re next! Truth or dare?”

“I’m not letting you throw me off anything,” Noah warned. 

\---

Gansey was maybe a little obsessed. Or fixated. Or preoccupied. He hadn’t found a term he liked yet and or one that made him feel like a normal person. Appropriate word aside, Gansey couldn’t stop thinking about truth or dare that night. Gansey felt like Ronan had casually handed him a burning coal and the only way he could put it down was to find out who Ronan liked. 

It was a reasonable thing to be concerned about, Gansey decided. (Yes, concerned about, that was the best way to put it). Firstly, Ronan was Gansey’s best friend, and the friend he has had the longest that is his own age. Secondly, the last person Gansey was fairly certain Ronan liked was Kavinsky, and Kavinsky had kidnapped his younger brother and then self immolated. Ronan had been through more than enough terrible things in his life, and Gansey didn’t want him to add heartbreak to the list. He cared about Ronan too much to see him hurt again. 

So, Gansey resolved to sleuth out whoever Ronan’s mystery crush out of selfless concern for his friend’s wellbeing and not at all because he’d been sleeping even less than usual for the past two nights. 

\---

A week’s worth of staring at Ronan in class to see if there was anyone he paid extra attention to had yielded nothing but a few raised eyebrows from Adam. It made sense, Gansey supposed, there was no one at Aglionby Gansey could imagine Ronan liking. But it wasn’t like Ronan was out all night doing things Gansey didn’t approve of with people Gansey approved of even less. If Ronan wasn’t with Gansey, he was with Adam or Noah, or even Blue sometimes, or some combination of them and if he wasn’t with any of them he was at the Church with his brothers or at the Barns. Theoretically, Ronan could be hanging out with other people he hasn’t mentioned when he says he goes to the Barns, but Ronan doesn’t lie, if he did he would’ve lied about liking someone. 

There was of course the stronger possibility that Ronan had a crush on one of their friends, which made Gansey feel somehow both like screaming and also like laying down in a hole and never moving again. 

Crammed into a sticky booth at Nino’s, Gansey watched Ronan and Adam bicker over the latin homework Adam was trying to get done before his shift next hour, feeling somewhat morose. Adam was probably the strongest contender, what with being whip smart and actually knowing about cars and how even though they fought all the time they always made up. 

Noah sent Gansey an exhausted sidelong glance and huffed. Noah was probably the runner up. Ronan was always messing with Noah, and Gansey figured that throwing him out a window was probably a sign of affection. Gansey couldn’t forget either how Ronan had shut himself in his room when he found out Noah was dead. 

“I think you’re forgetting someone,” Noah said. 

Gansey flushed and got out his own latin homework. 

\---

Gansey was sitting on the floor and meticulously painting the cardboard model he had made of Henrietta’s post office. His dumpster clock glowed 2:11 AM. He was feeling his leg fall asleep, so he pried it out from where he had crossed it under himself, but knocked over a cup of red paint in the process. He swore quietly to himself and got up to grab some paper towels. 

“Still up?” Ronan was leaning out of his bedroom. 

Gansey nodded and went to go mop up the paint from the floor. When he was done, he glanced up to find Ronan standing over him, wordlessly holding out his hand for the wad of paper towels. He threw it at the trash from across the room, missed by at least three feet, swore and then slouched over to pick it back up and throw it again. He missed and Gansey smiled. Finally Ronan conceded to just put it in the bin and came back to flop on his back on the floor next to Gansey. 

There was a good while of comfortable silence, where Gansey finished painting the post office and listening to the faint music he could hear from Ronan’s earbuds, while Ronan laid on the floor and methodically peeled apart the scraps of cardboard that had been discarded in the construction process. Gansey set down the post office in its place in model Henrietta.  
“Do you have a crush on Adam?” he asked.

Ronan sat up like he’d been shot and ripped out his earbuds. “What?”

“I asked if—”

“No, I heard you. I meant ‘what’ as in what the hell, Gansey?”

Gansey really didn’t know what had possessed him to keep pressing, but he felt like there was some unstoppable force pushing him forward. “Do you?”

“No,” he said stiffly. 

“Okay, so if it’s not Adam then it’s Noah?”

“Gansey.”

“Is it Blue? I mean I… Well.” Gansey did not know where he was going with that sentence.

“Gansey.”

“Do I know them? Have we met?”

“Gansey!” Ronan grabbed Gansey by the wrist and locked eyes with him. Gansey hadn’t noticed he’d been avoiding eye contact, but now there wasn’t any escaping it. 

Ronan seemed coiled so tight that he might explode. He swallowed and Gansey watched the muscles in his neck.

“It was you the whole time.”

Gansey felt like he was short circuiting. 

“I see,” he said.

Just like that Ronan dropped his wrist and shut himself in his room before Gansey could even turn around. Gansey had the vague sensation of the other shoe dropping, that his anxious predictions from that game of truth or dare two weeks ago had finally manifested before his eyes. Except of course it was Gansey who had crossed the line.

Ronan liked him. It was Gansey all along. Gansey turned this piece of information over in his brain. The answer to the puzzle that had been keeping him awake at night for the past week. Somewhere, underneath the queasy feeling of watching Ronan pull his hand away from Gansey like he had been burnt, a strange flickering warmth was spreading through Gansey’s chest. Ronan liked him. 

Gansey thought about how all he’s been able to think about for the past two weeks has been who Ronan likes. He thought about Ronan missing the trash can twice in a row. He thought about the warmth now swimming up to his head. Ronan liked him! 

Gansey got up and strode over to knock on Ronan’s door. “Ronan, I—”

The door swung open and Ronan was suddenly looming over Gansey, looking bright eyed and miserable. “Christ, Gansey. I should’ve kept my mouth shut but I really can’t fucking listen to whatever pity speech you’re about to give me.”

“Ronan—”

“Seriously, Gansey, I can’t.”

Ronan had started retreating back into his room and pulling the door closed and before Gansey had time to think, he grabbed the back of Ronan’s neck and pulled him down into a kiss. 

The moment that Ronan was completely frozen with Gansey’s mouth pressed against his made Gansey feel like nuclear meltdown alarms were going off in his brain. But when Gansey started to pull away Ronan revived and chased the kiss. All of the anxiety of the past weeks melted out of Gansey’s body, to be replaced with the electric delight of Ronan liking him, of Gansey liking Ronan, of the way Ronan’s stubble felt pressed against Gansey’s palm. 

When they finally broke away they were both smiling and out of breath. 

“Is this why you’ve been staring daggers at me the past two weeks? I thought it was because I still haven’t turned in my history paper.”

“What? Ronan! It’s three weeks overdue.”

Ronan laughed and kissed him again and Gansey kissed him back. For a moment. Then he pulled away again. “Ronan, seriously, you’ve got to turn that in.”

“Buzzkill.”

“But you still like me.” Gansey said, knowing he was definitely smiling like an idiot.

Ronan tipped his head to the side, his features warm in a way that was both novel and familiar. “I still like you.”


End file.
